November 02, 2019

Starlight and Gravity

by JanieM

Surely it's time for something completely different.

I went to an event tonight featuring the authors of the recently published book Proving Einstein Right: The Daring Expeditions that Changed How We Look at the Universe. The book was written by S. James Gates, professor of physics and math at Brown (among various other simultaneous careers) and Maine novelist Cathie Pelletier. They worked on this book together for IIRC five years, and only met each other in person about a month ago.

It’s a long story, and I didn’t take notes, but the gist is something like this: Cathie Pelletier ran across some old typed interviews of people, or people who were related to people, who were involved in the quest to test Einstein’s theory of gravity by tracking starlight during a total eclipse of the sun. Then she saw this commercial, and emailed Jim Gates out of the blue with her idea for a book about the whole thing. And thus this amazing collaboration was born.

I haven’t read the book yet but will pick it up next time I'm at B&N. I'm looking forward to dipping back into some physics for non-physicists – I haven’t done that for a long time.

Cathie’s novels are great too – sweet and funny and down to earth, a nice (and hopeful) antidote to real life as we're currently experiencing it. Most of them are set in the fictional town of Mattagash, Maine, modeled on the town of Allagash, waaaayyyyy up north, where Cathie grew up and is now living again after many decades and adventures elsewhere.

For the record, the eclipse where Dyson and Eddison finally proved that gravity deflected light was in 1919, 100 years ago this past May.

Comments

The likelihood that Trump ran numbers is pretty low, but of course everyone understood that piece description.

I was not aware that anyone had suggested that Trump ran numbers. (I.e. an illegal lottery.) Conned a lot of people, yes. Stiffed a lot of small contractors? That, too. But not running numbers. Where did that come from?

Godspeed to the impeachment inquiry. Let's get this over and done, send it to the Senate so they can do whatever the hell they are going to do with it, and then move on.

Get the freaking vote out in 2020 and crush the (R)'s like bugs. Trump or no Trump. Kick their @sses. They won't understand anything other than utter humiliating defeat.

Persuadable swing voters are, I think, gonna have to figure all of this out for themselves. Anything I do or say is just gonna be Another Liberal Hating On Trump, so other than here and with a very small circle of friends and family, I just don't talk about it.

Slightly more than half of eligible voters voted in 2016. Get the damned vote out and this problem will right itself.

it seems like what we have here is that the GOP has decide its new rhetorical strategy is: anything anyone has accused Trump of must be turned back on the left [do not bother seeing if it makes sense]. Trump's a grifter? no, Obama is a grifter! Trump is pursuing electoral shenanigans in Ukraine? no, Clinton was!